Looking Back to Move Forward

Happy 2017! The new year is generally a time of self-reflection — when we look back at last year's successes and failures while looking ahead to next year's goals. While many of us perform this exercise personally, how often do we step back and reflect on what our professional impact has been? It's so easy to get bogged down with day-to-day urgent tasks, that we can often lose sight of the bigger picture: how much impact has our work had? And are we adequately measuring it?

Being new to Foundation Center, I find myself asking these questions regularly – how do our services help the field and how can we continue to better serve funders and nonprofits so that they can be more successful?

Our goal at GrantCraft is to deliver knowledge essential to assist funders to be more strategic and effective in their work. We're starting the year off right with a collection of 5 case studies about Pittsburgh, now available in partnership with the Pittsburgh Philanthropy Project. We'll also be working with IssueLab and Glasspockets to share resources on evaluations: why they can be helpful and how they should be designed to better inform your work.

And YOU can help US assess our efforts by completing this short survey and telling us about your GrantCraft experience. The results of the survey will help us understand our own impact, and how to serve you better in the future!

So this year, why not make a resolution to learn from past endeavors and use that knowledge to further organizational goals. Check out the resources below on evaluation and impact, and keep reflecting on where you've been to keep moving forward.

PS: Look out for Foundation Center’s email and postcard about our annual Foundation Giving Forecast Survey. If you have questions about it, feel free to shoot me an email at skk@foundationcenter.org.

PPS: The next iteration of Foundation Maps' free monthly webinar series is "Foundation Maps for Community Foundations" on March 1, 2017 from 12:00-1:00pm ET, REGISTER NOW.

This letter originally appeared in yesterday's GrantCraft newsletter. To sign up for our newsletter and special alerts, register for free.